MSI is a global leader in the gaming industry, not only in the manufacturing of gaming laptops but also in the creation of gaming content and AIoT solutions. This company is no stranger to the gaming laptop market. One of its latest products is the MSI Sword 15, and we had the opportunity to review this device.
MSI has no less than nine gaming laptop series. Among them, the Sword series is more mainstream and user-friendly, compared to the GS Stealth series, GE Raider series, GL series, and GP Leopard series. It’s a gaming notebook, but not exactly one. The model we reviewed has an Intel i7-11800H processor, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. This model also comes with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.
Specifications
| Screen | 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080), 144Hz, IPS, AUO B156HAN08.4, 45% NTSC, 250nits |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7-11800H Processor |
| Wireless Connection | Gb LAN 802.11 ax Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth v5.2 |
| Graphics card | NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6, 85W Maximum Graphics Power with Dynamic Boost. |
| Memory | 16GB DDR4-3200 Memory, 2 x SO-DIMM Slots, Max 64GB |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 SSD, 2x M.2 SSD slots |
| Camera | HD type (30fps@720p) |
| Ports | 1x Type-C USB3.2 Gen1 2x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1 1x Type-A USB2.0 1x RJ45 1x (4K @ 60Hz) HDMI |
| Battery | 53.5 Battery (Whr) with a 180W adapter |
| OS | Windows 10 Home |
| Weight | 2.25 kg |
Before we review this laptop in detail, it’s important to note that the MSI Sword 15 is currently priced at around $1,300. The price depends on the retailer and region.
Design and Appearance
The design of the MSI Sword 15 is completely different from other MSI laptops, using the signature black and red color scheme for a gaming appearance. The use of an all-white design gives a sense of freshness to the MSI gaming laptop design.
This laptop has the MSI Sword series logo on the back cover of the display. This is the iconic “Dragon Shield” logo. Interestingly, the logo has an all-white design that hides the logo, making it less eye-catching. In fact, at first glance, you might think that this device does not have any logo or text on the back cover of the display.
The palm rest of the device also has an all-white design. The only non-white areas you can see are the hinges on the left and right sides of the display, which are black. In addition, the label on the keyboard is gray, and there are Intel Core and GeForce RTX stickers on the left palm rest.
At the bottom of this notebook, there is a heat vent, which covers most of the bottom. This design is not common in the gaming laptop industry. Of course, this is another area of this laptop that doesn’t use an all-white design. It uses the opposite color, all black. The large area has high-density hollow openings with a rough design. This rough design is more conducive to proper heat dissipation.
The device measures 359 x 259 x 24.9 mm and weighs 2.25 kg, which is not bad for a gaming laptop. Out of this weight, the weight of a 180W power adapter is around 500g. This means that the effective weight of the device is around 2.2 kg.
Display
The first thing anyone will probably notice about the display of the device is the diagonal design of the bottom and top bezels. The side bezels are very thin and impressive, which gives the display an immersive performance. The top bezel has a special design where the sides are thin, but the center part (where the camera is located) is slightly thicker. The bottom bezel can be described as thick, which is a bit disappointing. Just like the bottom of the device, the bezel of the display is all-black.
The MSI Sword 15 has a 15.6-inch display. This display supports a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and has a refresh rate of 144Hz. Although the bottom bezel is thick, the side and top bezels are quite thin, which makes up for the bottom bezel and increases the screen-to-body ratio.
According to MSI, this is the gaming screen with the fastest response time and offers the most vivid visuals. Testing it with AIDA64, we see that the screen is AUO B156HAN08.4. In addition to a high refresh rate of 144Hz, this screen also supports a 45% NTSC color gamut.
Keyboard
The keyboard of the MSI Sword 15 retains the compact layout of the Sword series. However, the individual keys appear to be more compact than the previous generation. Despite the compact nature of the keys, they perfectly fit the finger, except you have a really big finger. MSI also made some changes to the functionality of the keyboard.
While looking at the keyboard layout, we noticed that the FN key, which is usually located on the left side of the keyboard, is now located on the right side, just to the side of the Ctrl key. This may pose a challenge for some users who are not used to this layout. However, you don’t have to worry; you can go to the MSI Center and switch its position via the Win button. Additionally, while the size of the arrow keys remains the same, the Shift key on the right side has shrunk slightly, while the Ctrl key has gotten significantly wider. This design is more friendly to competitive gamers.
This keyboard is designed for gamers and comes with a user-friendly backlight. This gaming laptop uses a single blue backlight, which is eye-friendly. The keys have a 1.7mm travel, which provides better response and haptic feedback. The new ergonomically designed keyboard will meet all your needs.
Ports
The MSI Sword 15 has good connection ports. On the right side, the device has an RJ-45 Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, and an audio combo jack. On the left side, it has a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, a USB 2.0 Type-A port, and a DC-in port. The port’s scalability is quite good and can meet the daily needs of gamers.
The MSI Sword 15 supports Wi-Fi 6 with the 802.11ax standard. This wireless connection is 3x faster than Wi-Fi 5. It is designed to deliver lightning-fast gaming speeds, the best streaming, and the most immersive communication experience.
Hardware
This gaming laptop comes with the latest 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor (specifically the i7-11800H). The chip delivers a 40% performance increase over the previous generation. This 8-core processor has more power and can achieve frequencies up to 4.6GHz to maximize gaming efficiency. This also improves the overall productivity and multitasking capabilities of this notebook.
In addition, the MSI Sword 15 uses GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs (specifically the RTX 3060). This improves the performance of the device for creators and gamers. The chip comes with RT Cores, Tensor Cores, and streaming multiprocessors.
What I found most interesting about the hardware is that MSI has included a new feature in this notebook, the Resizable Bar. This feature allows the CPU to access the entire GPU framebuffer at once. This significantly improves the performance of this notebook. In fact, this feature gives the Sword 15 a performance advantage over other notebooks that use similar chips.
To access the Resizable BAR feature, you may need to update the latest VBIOS, BIOS, and drivers through the MSI official website or consult the service center.
Performance tests
The MSI Sword 15 seems to have a powerful cooling system. However, we did some testing to determine the actual performance of the device. Please note that all tests were conducted in the highest performance mode offered by the laptop.
As we mentioned earlier, the major upgrade of the MSI Sword 15 is the use of an Intel Core i7-11800H processor. The chip also has a 2.3GHz base frequency, 24MB L3 cache, 10MB L2 cache, and 45W TDP.
CPU: In the CineBench R15 test, the i7-11800H scored 229cb for single-core and 1876cb for multi-core.
In the CineBench R20 test, the i7-11800H performance improved significantly, reaching a single-core score of 529cb and a multi-core score of 4369cb.
GPU
We used 3DMark to test the performance of this graphics card in this gaming laptop, which has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU (85W).
In the Time Spy test, the score of the Sword 15 graphics card is 7941. In the Time Spy Extreme test, the graphics card score is 3,719, the CPU score is 3,926, and the total score is 4,645.
We also used the Fire Strike test to look at the performance of the MSI Sword 15 graphics card. The test result shows a score of 17,289.
SSD
The laptop comes with a Kingston SN530 M.2 SSD, which is the OEM version of the SN550. Using the CrystalDiskMark test, the SSD has a read speed of 2435 MB/s while the write speed is 1911 MB/s.
Cooling System
As a gaming laptop, the heat dissipation, temperature, and cooling capacity of this laptop are always a top priority. MSI Sword 15 did not fail in this regard. On the palm rest of this notebook, there are 16 heat dissipation vents at the hinges. These holes are located close to the screen, so they don’t cause any heating issues to the user. Throughout the review period of this notebook, the screen did not inherit additional temperature from the heat dissipated from these holes. On the back of this device, there are two heat outlets, which can also reduce the temperature of the device.
The main heatsink of this notebook is located at the bottom of the device. Almost the entire bottom has a high-density hollow opening with a rough design. This rough design is more conducive to heat dissipation. In addition, it has an internal copper tube structure that further helps to dissipate the heat of this laptop properly.
The MSI Sword 15 supports a technology called Cooler Boost 5. This feature comes with a special cooling solution with six pipes to improve the performance of the CPU and GPU. A peek inside the device reveals that the Cooler Boost 5 cooling system not only has six pipes but is also equipped with two cooling fans.
With MSI’s exclusive thermal grease and increased heat pipe diameter, this laptop ensures maximum performance even in extreme gaming conditions.
We conducted some testing on the temperature of these chips. After 20 minutes of GPU stress testing, the performance was basically stable at around 85W. In this test, the room temperature was 25°C. The test results showed that the GPU temperature remained around 71°. Since the power consumption is limited to around 85W, the performance is slightly conservative. However, the overall temperature of the chip is not too high.
Gaming Tests
For the game test, we set all game settings to their highest levels. The results are as follows
| Game | Quality | DLSS On |
| Metro Exodus | 1920×1080, image quality: highest, ray tracing: high | 62fps |
| Bright Memory: Infinite | 1920×1080, ray tracing: high | 68fps |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 1920×1080, image quality: mid, ray tracing: high | 49fps |
| Assassin’s Creed: Hall of Valor | 1920×1080, high image quality | 61fps
|
| Tomb Raider: Shadow | 1920×1080, image quality: mid, ray tracing: no | 93fps |
For Cyberpunk 2077, you can also choose to turn off ray tracing if you don’t care about image quality. This will increase the frame rate to 60fps, and the experience is still excellent.
Summary
The design of this gaming notebook is a masterpiece. MSI has done an excellent job with the all-white design, which makes this notebook very attractive. Considering it doesn’t look like a gaming laptop, it can be used as a regular laptop. The use of Intel’s latest i7-11800H processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU is the device’s main selling point. The performance of these chips is quite good.
Where can I buy these laptops for $1300 on sale?
Your article has me almost ready to pull the trigger and buy the Sword. However, does heat actually dissipate from the bottom side of the Sword, making this laptop unsuitable for use resting on my laptop? 🙂 My experience of owning the Dell XPS 15 is that it is only good on a table with bottom clearance because all the heat dissipates from the bottom of the XPS. I am seeking a performance laptop that can be used when sitting on my lap or resting on my bed.